The Poetry Marathon

You did it! Congratulations! I am very much impressed! You wrote 24 poems in 24 hours. This is an achievement that few poets ever accomplish. Now you should probably go get some sleep.

After every marathon I have participated in I, have been filled with exhaustion but also a tremendous sense of achievement. I hope you have that too.

If you completed the marathon please send us an email in the next couple of days to poets@thepoetrymarathon.com with your full name and email address in the body of the email. In the next few weeks you should receive your digital certificate.

I imagine that a lot of poets right now are ready to sleep. So that is the theme of the final prompt. Write a poem about sleep. What it is like to sleep, what it is like to dream, what you are dreaming about. But don’t fall asleep until you press Publish!

‘The worst enemy to creativity is self–doubt.’ – Sylvia Plath

I love this quote. Doubt is something almost all writers face. However it is rarely something we write about. Your prompt is to write about a poem about doubt. It could be self doubt, it could be doubt in terms of creative writing, or it could be about doubt in general.

Write a non-traditional love poem. Both the words non-traditional and love are open to your interpretation.

Write a poem inspired by a writer that you admire. The poem should mention the name of the writer explicitly at least once. The writer’s influence should be seen in the content or the tone of the poem.

Listen to the song Your Hand in Mine by Explosions in the Sky, and write during it. If the song is up before your poem is finished, play it again. It is a good song to write to in part because it has no lyrics.

You can listen to the song here.

Grab a random book from your shelf. It can be a book of any genre. Use either the first sentence from the first chapter or the last sentence from the last chapter as the opening line of the poem. Make sure to note the name of the book and the author in a footnote to the poem.

This prompt is to take a common proverb, such as “don’t count your chickens before they hatch” and turn it into a poem. You can choose any proverb or common saying. The proverb can appear as it normally does in the poem, or you can twist it. It can be a small part of the poem or its core.

What one physical object (I am not talking about your dog or cat or baby, but a possession) would you save in case of a fire? Your prompt this hour is to write a poem about that possession.

Write a sestina! A sestina is a poem with six stanzas of six lines and a final triplet, all stanzas having the same six words at the line-ends in six different sequences that follow a fixed pattern, and with all six words appearing in the closing three-line envoi.

Does that sound intimidating and time consuming? It only is if you do it from scratch, however there is a website that helps with the creation of sestinas: http://dilute.net/sestinas/

All you have to do is come up with 6 words and they will figure out the order of everything, then you can add the rest of the text yourself. A sestina can really get you writing about something you would normally not. They are great in that way.